


it grows and roams*

by anyakindheart



Category: About Time (2013 Curtis), Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, M/M, Multi, also major character kinda dies but kinda not, bitter syrup, but this has a happy ending i promise, i'm naive and so is this text, it might give you toothaches, lots of weirdness and skipped scenes, unknown time gaps between different parts, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 06:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12835212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anyakindheart/pseuds/anyakindheart
Summary: (...) she might not even remember this scene in a couple of days, but that's the exact opposite of what Corvo wants. He wants her to think about him. Or, excuse him, he would love that very much. That's what he thinks when he rushes into the bathroom, pushes a random door, closes the toilet sit and climbs onto it. Clenches his fists. This is all it takes - thumping blood in between his fingers, eyes shut tight and a clear memory of the moment he wants to go back into.And there he is.(long story short: that's just Corvo testing the murky waters and learning about things that can and can't be fixed)





	it grows and roams*

**Author's Note:**

> *the title is taken from the poem “ODE TO TIME” by Pablo Neruda;  
> the text itself was an eternal birthday gift for Yulya, the best guiding light of my autumns and winters and summers and springs. 
> 
> AN IMPORTANT NOTE: English is not my first language  
> i've learnt about 85% of it by binge-watching numerous tv shows and movies. that's why the text might feel cranky and weird sometimes. that's also why i will be very grateful for any notes and corrections! i'm willing to fix any mistakes, so please tell me if any places and words and commas and stuff need to be fixed. 
> 
> and about the text itself...  
> (...)  
> well, the idea seemed fresh enough to make me actually want to write my first text in another language and i'm grateful for that
> 
> thanks xoxo

I.

There is so much more to people than just being pretty or handsome, and Corvo isn't sure what it is that gets him so hard in the lady, but he is already struck, standing next to her table, heart red and full and arms limp like ropes. She turns the coffee cup in her fingers, examines the black inscription on it and then - oh boy, then she starts laughing.

"I'm sorry," she says, "but that's not quite... Ah, nevermind. Thank you so very much, sir."

 _'JESSAMESSA'_ is written on the cup's side in his own unsteady handwriting because just talking to her from behind the counter was like being happily buried under a mountain full of light. Not quite the actual name, Corvo thinks as he walks from the backdoor into the silver mall hall, using his break time as the greatest changing opportunity. 

We have to fix that. 

Because she might not even remember this scene in a couple of days, but that's the exact opposite of what Corvo wants. He wants her to think about him. Or, excuse him, he would _love_ that very much. That's what he thinks when he rushes into the bathroom, pushes a random door, closes the toilet sit and climbs onto it. Clenches his fists. This is all it takes - thumping blood in between his fingers, eyes shut tight and a clear memory of the moment he wants to go back into. 

And there he is.

I. 

_‘Jessamine,’_ he writes this time. Even adds a tiny curve to the last 'e'. Holds out the cup for the lady. Wants to say "You're welcome, have a good day" to her and maybe drop something charming as well, but apparently his tongue is no friend of his.

"Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?" he asks stupidly before he can even think of explaining his goddamn actions. 

She blinks, she takes the cup and then laughs _(again)_ \- Corvo recognizes the laugh. It makes him feel special because it does not sound like the laugh of someone who had tons of joy during the whole past week. 

_Shit_ , Corvo thinks, but the good thing is, he can go back into this very moment as many times as he wants. This might not be completely doomed.

When the lady (Jessamine, he could really just... start calling her by her hame, at least in his head) gives him the answer, it goes like this:

"No, my daughter caught me. But thank you for your concern."

...and Corvo blinks, smiles, feels like his heart spreads warmly all over the counter, and maybe this is not doomed at all.

II. 

Her daughter’s name is Emily, she’s ten years old and she would’ve gotten the same amount of points if Corvo had an idea of trying to rate her on a 5-point grading scale. Emily is adorable, but Corvo makes a mistake of buying her a teddy-bear as a present - because, frankly speaking, he has no idea of what girls her age might like. It’s the small frown that gives her away, and Corvo knows he doesn’t have to do it because overall the whole _‘meeting-my-significant-other-to-be’s-kid’_ thing goes on really well, but he still excuses himself to use a bathroom. He still finds himself clenching his fists and squinting his eyes so tight that his eyelashes splash into seven-pointed stars, wishing to be able to do everything perfect this time.

If it matters to Jessamine, if it matters to Emily, then it matters to Corvo as well. Simple as that.

II. 

Maybe it’s not about her being a ‘girl’. Maybe it’s about her being an adventurous _kid_ , and maybe she’s not that different from what Corvo was like when he was around ten or twelve. He also remembers she likes to draw, so he gets her an enormous box full of colored pencils, water markers and wax crayons, an album with thick paper and a small glossy booklet. Of course, the last one catches her attention.

“What’s this?” Emily asks, desperately trying to clutch the box against her chest and to examine the booklet at the same time. 

“This came with a kit,” Corvo says, He tries to manage a friendly bit of mystery, and judging by the look on Jessamine’s face (she’s waiting for them, car door open and a hand on the wheel, and she smiles at him), he’s finally good at it. 

“Which kit?” Emily asks, and there is a mischievous gloss bouncing off of her words, and this is just where Corvo would like this to go. 

“The _‘Build Your Own House-on-a-Tree’_ kit,” he says, looking at Jessamine quickly. “I mean, not that you’re going to find me hammering a tree in your backyard tomorrow… This is only if you want… And if your mother’s okay with that…”

His own idea feels like the most stupid thing that was ever produced by his head, and he even starts wrecking his brain for where to find a closet or some dark narrow place to travel back again to fix everything, but then Emily starts jumping, even claps her hands several times.

“Woooah!” She yells. “Do I want? Do _I_ want?! How can _anyone_ possibly not want a _treehouse_! Mom?” She turns around. “Mom, please?”

“Someday - why not,” Jessamine says. “But definitely not right now, or we’ll be late for the movie.”

And Emily is okay with him sitting on the passenger’s seat next to her mother. 

And suddenly Corvo feels pretty much at home.

IV.

He knows he mustn’t fuck it up, but you know what he does? He takes the front panel of the treehouse, a solid piece of chipboard, all colorful and bright with spirals, circles, all kinds of designs and shit, and then he nails it backwards.

He asks himself: _Jesus, Corvo, what were you thinking?_

The answer is chill and honest: _I was thinking about the way Jessamine kissed my cheek this morning._

Barely even a kiss, more like… a touch shaped like a lightning bolt across a petal. But apparently this was enough. Doing great, Corvo. You’re… presentable. Reliable. And, what’s even more important - a hell of a carpenter. 

Emily, of course, laughs her head off when she sees it, Corvo standing awkwardly under the tree next to her with a wicked hammer in his hand. As if it was the hammer’s fault… 

“I got a little carried away,” he says.

“And that was, like, _really un-clever_ of you,” Emily passes back, voice being wavy and magnetic, like that’s the most brilliant catchphrase she’s ever used. She smiles, bright dark eyes and a splash of pink sunburnt bravado on her nose. Corvo laughs, because honestly, how can you not. 

“Heard this one from someone you like?” He asks, because that’s what he was kind of lacking when he was a kid: people being genuinely interested in what he likes, thinks and does. And the whole “What-would-I-have-wanted” scheme seems to be working so far so good. 

“Yeah,” Emily says and suddenly climbs inside her new quirky treehouse as agilely as a small swift squirrel. “From me, Emily the Great Empress!”

She swings her legs so vigorously that a couple of full green leaves falls off the next branch. Emily adds,

“And this is my Residence!” 

Corvo completely gives up the weak thought of going back to fix the tree house.

VII. 

Emily’s such a young lady of endless motion - and also very supportive of Corvo’s attempts to impress her mother.

“But,” she whispers into the phone, making soft dull sounds while tossing and tumbling around the clothes kept in a wardrobe where she’s hiding, not to let Jessamine hear her Secret Phone Conversation with Corvo, “please don’t order any flowers for her. Especially not the potted ones. She makes a total mess out of a simple watering act, and she would have probably been very open about her hate towards any kind of plants if it weren’t for my aunt who’s, like, completely off the trolley about her flowers...”

There’s a small pause. Then Emily says, voice sly and conspiratorial,

“She’s, like, the President of the Flower Haters’ Secret Club.”

Corvo has no idea what to say. Probably because there already is a delivery guy with a romantic note and the hugest potted purple orchid he could possibly find on his way to the Kaldwin’s house. 

Why the hell did he think this was a good idea? 

Gotta find a dark place and undo everything, Corvo thinks. The thought is easy and very close to his heart, but then Emily reads right from the awkward silence. 

“You’ve done something terrible already, haven’t you?” She asks, and kind-hearted full-bodied glee is strewn from every small bit of sound she makes. 

“Well…” Corvo says, and there is another pause. Then Emily says, voice formal and full of responsibility, 

“Okay, okay. You’re in trouble, but we got this, partner. I’m gonna stall the delivery person using a roll of paper towels, a party horn and a bike. And you...” She makes some unintentional crinkling sounds, “...you’d better come straight here. No stupid flowers. And if you want to make a gift, just bring a video game.”

“Is this a reward for you for helping me?” Corvo half-jokes. Honestly, he doesn’t mind to give Emily a bunch of video games for being this much on board. He knows how things can be in other families with a single parent when that parent starts seeing someone. 

“What?” Emily sounds puffy and almost offended. “No, silly! Mom loves video games! So you can just come over and tell her you’ve been to a gaming store, noticed this one and immediately thought of her… And decided to stop by to offer her to play with you. Just make sure not to pick anything gross or scary. Something complex and interesting with lots of quests would do. Though she would play “Just Dance” with you and win, that’s for sure…”

There’s an audible smirk in her voice.

“Emily, I owe you so much,” Corvo says, completely honest. 

“That you do,” she responds, still as smiley as ever. “Teach me how to play a guitar someday and we’ll be even.”

And he says: anytime, and he means every letter of the word.

VIII.

He’s so unsure of which game to choose, and shop assistants really aren’t of much help, so he ends up buying some ‘BEST-SELLING’ game about magic and adventures. It seems long and layered, with great graphics and a diversity of main characters, and also promises ‘an amazing storyline in which almost every choice you make matters more than you might think it would’.

Just like Emily said, Jessamine is excited about the game.

“Ow!” She says in awe, bringing her fingers up to her lower lip. “How did you know I never actually got around to this one?”

Corvo is already over the moon.

“You mean, you wanted to play it?” 

She makes a calling gesture with her hand, and Corvo steps inside her house. She is very fast to help him with his rough denim jacket, and the touch of her palm on his shoulder is, um, unsettling in the best possible way. 

“Yeah!” She exclaims. “Though I have watched a variety of walkthroughs on Youtube and by now I know about 90 percent of the whole plot…”

Corvo shrinks a little bit from this one. 

“Oh no,” Jessamine says and stands in the living room doorway with her hands on her hips. When Corvo lifts his eyes up to her face, she’s smiling, the brightest silver pearl in a seaweed nest. “You, mister, are invited to share the wholesome experience of playing this thing. I have some thoughts about who you would like to romance in there and I’m really curious to check if I’m right.” 

Of course he says yes, so they bring some ice cream from the kitchen and then sit on the floor beside the TV while the opening credits of the game are rushing through the screen.

“And thank God you brought no flowers,” Jessamine says, licking the rest of the ice cream from her spoon. “For some reason almost every other man thinks it’s a great idea to give me a monster palm or a suffocating orchid. So thank you for being so thoughtful.” 

Other man didn’t have your princess-of-a-child’s help, Corvo thinks, and once again he knows just how blessed he actually is in this timeline.

IX. 

The game is… well, very good.

Corvo has a hard time himself when trying to choose his love interest in the game, but it’s great to know that the question is heavily settled in the real life.

No doubts, Corvo thinks as he receives a sudden kiss from Jessamine over the game controller. Corvo has never been the shy one, never been the hiding one, always having plenty of bright people around, but her lips taste like that raspberry ice cream and her palm is clinging onto his arm and there is the most gentle silky stroke on his forehead from a stray of her hair. Her whole presence makes him feel bubbly and scattery and excited, it’s almost like being a genie trapped in a lamp for a forty thousands years and finally being found and held. She is adventurous and fierce; she might appear strict and, oh, boring, but the stars in her eyes are heavily fueled and have nine ends each.

To Corvo, this never really was a question. 

He touches her face with the lightest fingers and kisses her back until his head is stuffed with hot steam and his belly is full of beautiful void. 

Then he excuses himself ‘for a second’, and judging by the funny look on Jessamine’s face she’s made her own conclusions; she of course will never know just how many times he’s going to replay their first kiss until it gets enough.

IX.

Ow, never enough.

IX. 

Never.

IX. 

Not even like that.

IX.

(He does this seven times and decides to stop only after almost mistaking a window for a door from all the dizziness in his head.)

Their lips part. He can’t look anywhere but at her face, can’t actually taste anything on his tongue that’s not the subtle berry flavor of the ice cream or the sweet curve of her lips, that ever-lingering chuckle on them. 

He almost wants to replay the scene for the last time, but then Jessamine grabs her controller back.

“So, I’m still quite curious, Corvo! Would you really support the templars?”

It takes him a dozen of seconds to remember how letters and sounds are supposed to form words.

X. 

Emily is dressed as the Demogorgon, huge silky and spiked rafflesia flower on her head and thick chest armor made of papier mache. This is the best Halloween costume ever, has to be the best because Emily, Jessamine and Corvo spent nine incredibly challenging days on it.

Emily takes her candy pot (a smiling plastic pumpkin), kisses mother’s cheek, bumps her tiny fist with Corvo’s, rough and big as an uncertain boulder, and jumps down the porch to lead a group of her friends to Trick-or-Treat. 

He almost feels like he’s betraying Emily when after just an hour he’s already in the kitchen, and Jessamine is sitting on the countertop, her legs between his nervous palms. 

She looks behind herself and starts putting away some kitchen tools and stuff from the countertop. To clean the surface, Corvo realizes. To lay flat on it. Woah, woah.  
Jessamine takes a funny knife with a short narrow nose, orange-tinted, opens a drawer without looking and puts the knife there. 

“It’s called a carving knife,” she whispers, a silver flow with gentle feathers rubbing against his skin, the melting feeling of another person, warm and wanting, in his hands, almost underneath his steady body.

“Carving,” he repeats in a backwhisper like a merry-go-round, and his voice turns into a raven, into a splash of his own feathers, into strokes of quiet slowly prowling music; his hands are grateful and strong and they follow the shape of Jessamine’s body, her ribcage that is able to carry that beautiful heart of hers, her waistline that is exciting and worrying for Corvo, her hips and knees and inner thighs. She leans back, and he follows eagerly. 

He takes a fall, and it feels like spinning in a spiral, like nesting, like taking, like being taken. This is exactly as beautiful as he had seen in his (mostly quite wet and not that romantic) dreams, undressing her slowly and letting her undress him, her leg pressed to his side, the warm heart-shaped skinspace under her knee, the shiver of her eyelids, the quiet pleased sounds she makes. 

He’s not too surprised to find out that holding Jessamine after making love to her is even more precious than replaying the actual scene.

XII. 

“This,” Corvo says. He doesn’t even try to tail the word with a question mark.

Emily and Jessamine both look at him sparkly and glossy, and then with the same gesture they cover their mouths with their palms and start giggling. 

“Like mother, like daughter,” Corvo says in awe and slightly shakes his Christmas present in his hands, an _extremely_ ugly Christmas sweater. Probably the ugliest piece of clothing he has ever seen - his newest belonging from now on. It’s red and huge and covered in pom-poms of the best MS Paint’s colors, but there’s actually more.

Corvo unfolds the sweater and turns it around to inspect the holiday monstrosity face to face when a piece of thick fabric makes an attempt to fall down. 

“Oh,” Corvo says, “Can it by any chance be… ripped?” 

What a pity, he thinks, and how lucky he is to have a sudden chance to never have this thing close to his body! 

But they, those _malicious women_ , burst into even more laughter. A whole unholy _avalanche_ of giggles. 

“Not exactly,” Jessamine says, sounding like all her insides actually hurt from the laughter. 

“There goes a nipple,” Emily breathes out. 

Corvo looks at them, perfectly still. Peaceful, even. 

“Yeah!” Emily exclaims. “When you.. you put it on, this thing… it’s kind of like a pocket… it just falls down and opens some parts of you… And you’re supposed to make your male titty a deer!”

 _“What?”_ Corvo asks. He couldn’t have gotten this right, could he? 

“The nipple,” Jessamine says in a high-pitched voice, grainy with laughter and soft tears, “would be a nose. Then you stick a pair of googly eyes right above it. And also a pair of antlers. And there you go.”

“The whole thing was made for people who would like to show off a naked nipple disguised as a deer face?”

“I believe that’s pretty much it.”

Corvo shakes his head, abruptly. 

“Thank you both, so much,” he says from the hottest depths of his heart.

XIII.

When Corvo moves in with the Kaldwins, his stuff only takes a middle-sized car to be transported in one go.

Their first collective vacation as a wholesome _family_ is a trip to an old tail of the Wrenhaven river. They’re early into summer, and Emily is wearing her yellow wellies, and the sun is bright white and sweet like condensed milk. Corvo catches a lizard for Emily; he holds it carefully, making sure not to stress it out hard enough to make it shed its tail, and suddenly realizes that he hasn’t been doing any time jumps for… quite some time. Like every moment of life is just as sharply enjoyable as it can possibly be. 

Emily lets the lizard run away through low rough grass colored like emerald and black chalk. Corvo watches it go, heart warm and full and content.

“So, would you propose to mom?” Emily says later. They’re sitting in the car at a filling station while Jessamine is outside, probably buying some snacks. 

Corvo chokes on air so hard that his throat makes a weird popping sound. 

_Should I?_ \- he thinks (stupidly).

 _Why would I?_ \- he thinks (stupidly as well, he damn well knows why). 

“Can I?” He says instead, quietly. 

“You tell me,” Emily says, rolling her eyes at him. Then she bends over from the passenger’s seat (sometimes they switch places) and pats Corvo’s hand sympathetically. 

“Don’t be stupid, _dad,”_ she says.

Corvo is still kind of gasping for air when Jessamine comes back with a pack of cereal bars.

XVII. 

There is nothing romantic in death. Nothing poetic, either. Nothing that wouldn’t have been cold and sticky and completely unbearable.

Corvo feels like he’s not here, like he’s somehow fallen under the edge of time, like maybe his foot slipped during his last leap and the time loop ended up tightening around his neck because he can’t breathe and it seems completely surreal. 

_What am I going to tell Emily,_ he thinks as he races through the city, car wheels turning on flickering energy of his long unsteady lamento. 

_What am I going to do,_ he thinks as he tries not to let the thought about Jessamine and some random car accident nest between his ears.

 _What if this is a mistake,_ he thinks as he pulls over, the car eaten-and-beaten: dark night void with bright police splashes across. 

This is not a mistake, and Corvo weeps and clenches clenches _clenches_ his fists till the crescents bloom on the softness of his palms.

He has almost forgotten the burning urge to scatter himself through space and void just to see if any of the remaining pieces will somehow fall into place.

I. 

He writes: ‘JESSAMESSA’. She looks, she laughs. She has a daughter.

Corvo is floating. He takes the first evercoming chance to run to the bathroom. He closes the door. He leaps.

I.

He does that again.

I.

He does that again.

And again. 

And again. 

Gotta write ‘Jessamine’ next time, he thinks, because for some years from that moment on this is still going to be okay.

0\. 

The problem is, he is so exhausted, because she dies in every other timeline.

She dies, and dies, and dies. This keeps happening. He keeps travelling back. Then travelling forward: the same cryroad, black and long.

One night, in a dream he sees a man disguising himself as a beast. The dream is restless and looks like a piece of washed-off teal skin. The man has completely black eyes; he takes Corvo’s hands in his. His fingers are human, no talons, no scales, just weather-beaten skin. He says: “My dear Corvo”, and Corvo feels like he’s about to jolt awake, but it seems like the beast-eyed man still wants to take something from him.

(Or maybe to give?)

“You cannot save her,” the man says. 

(Wow, that seems more like taking to Corvo, actually)

“Thank you,” Corvo says sharply, “I am fully aware of that. I’ve tried.”

_Because who are you to remind me. Who are you, how did you find me and can you please forget my scent and let tall sapphire grass cover the road to my house._

The man chuckles. He traces Corvo’s knuckles with his pale cold thumbs and then shoves Corvo’s hands away, but Corvo keeps levitating without a single feeling in any of his muscles.

“But _he_ can be saved from killing her,” the man says, and Corvo feels an explosion forming in his forehead. 

“What the fuck are you- - -”

He doesn’t finish this because the explosion ripens faster. The flash is dark, like from a blacklight. Corvo closes his eyes. It’s dark. He opens them. It’s still dark, but feels like bed, sweat and a burn in his left hand. The skin is red and irritated there, but by the morning it’s all gone.

XIX. 

He sits on the Kaldwin’s porch, and he is dry and hollow. It took him almost twenty newly-old lifetimes to finally give up and get back to this wretched one, because he felt like somebody should take care of everything that happens here.

He remembers the funeral and how Emily hadn’t shed a single tear, her small pearly hand in his, her black ribbon, a tight line of her mouth.

He remembers the first talk with his dad about the 'Family Ability’ on a sandy and windy day. How his dad said that they can jump through their memories as much as they like, but they can’t really skip past birth or past death. This might seem fair, but to Corvo it’s not. 

Even after four months, Emily’s friends are taking great care of her, taking her places and not letting her drop her head too deep into thick silver waters of grief. While she’s hanging out with them, Corvo spends his time alone, or visits a local pub just to shatter himself across the others, or takes long cold walks until the town’s pavements slide into wild fields.

‘YOU CANNOT SAVE HER’ is a constant beast living in his head. 

He tries, but he can’t, and he has no idea what to do.

XX.

Then there is this man at the “Hound’s Pit” who spends every evening near the jukebox. He has an unholy amount of old coins and he stuffs the jukebox with them to make it play ‘Carry On My Wayward Son’ by Kansas, time after time, numerous times, which is a _headache._

“Fuckin’ turn it off already, will ya?” Corvo yells from the counter. The jukebox man turns on his massive high chair to look at him. He’s tall and broad, with large back and a flat lightning of a scar almost across his right eye. Silvery patches in his hair, some kind of perpetual sorrow woven into his features. 

“Make me, fella,” the man says, but he looks more like a shadow of a man. The shadow that is thick and heavy and will not lurk but bite. 

Corvo buys him a drink. 

The shadow man looks confused as hell but still takes a seat near Corvo. 

“I thought you were gonna punch me,” he says, unsure, almost full of crinkled hope. 

“I wanted to,” Corvo shrugs, “but the day is already shitty as hell, so I guess I just didn’t want to drag it even further.”

It takes them a couple of glasses to exchange names. The man’s name is Daud. Corvo believes it should mean ‘beloved’ or something like that.

Daud’s face splashes like a papercut under a nail when Corvo tells him that. 

“Yeah, whatever,” he says. His fingers spin the glass around. The wet ring on the counter turns into a smudged dark spot.

XXII. 

It’s surprising to Corvo, but they do have quite a lot to talk about.

They meet here almost every evening, never drink anything stronger than beer, but talk until their voices are hoarse and stretched. To Corvo, Daud feels like a handle of a knife: he seems dull and heavy but you do realize there is sharpness scattering into dozens of bright possibilities at the far end. 

“I don’t trust the movies where the hero doesn’t have to fucking die twelve times to get what he needs. Doesn’t seem realistic to me,” Daud says in the middle of their lazy talk about tastes in movies and music and everything that doesn’t have to be painfully real. 

Corvo’s hand tightens a little bit on the counter.

“You too?” Daud asks. There is strange sense of care in the tone of his voice. 

“Yeah,” Corvo says. And then, “About half a year ago, something very bad happened to me.”

Because for some reason he feels the resemblance.

Daud’s eyes shift. 

“Same,” he says bitterly, and Lord, Corvo could have really been more thoughtful.

XXV.

With the first thick ice covering the Wrenhaven river, Daud suggests Corvo to go fishing. Emily is spending the weekend at her friend’s house, so Corvo doesn’t really mind.

Up to this moment they’ve been hanging out for quite enough time to start calling each other ‘old man’ and ‘gramps’. Daud is steady and silvery. When Corvo looks at him, it feels like his thoughts are finally curling comfortably in his head.

They hum Eddie Money’s ‘Take Me Home Tonight’ together as they ride, Daud’s fingers tapping on a steering wheel.

The fishing is particularly poor, but they end up fooling around in snow like a pair of twelve-year-olds. There is a fierce snowball fight, a heavy stand-off, then a capitulation. Then Corvo takes out a thermos flask.

The tea is steaming, white lapsing curls in the air. Both Daud and Corvo stand next to each other, their hips pressed into the deadly cold metal of Daud’s car.

Then, right above the warm steamy bottlecup of tea, Daud speaks.

“I hit a woman once,” he says, “to death, while I was driving. I got away with that. And this haunts me still.”

Corvo stays very stiff. Says nothing.

 _This haunts me too,_ he thinks, and suddenly his mouth is deep and full of salt and needles.

0.

The man visits him again when a week passes from the moment Corvo stops answering Daud’s calls and seeing him in the “Hound’s Pit”. They are stuck in grey air, levitating again. A tornado of rusty cars with bright flashlights twists and twirls and turns around them, soundlessly.

The man looks at Corvo with a strange something in his opaque eyes, as if Corvo managed to fall asleep in the middle of their talk. 

“Come on, Corvo,” the man says. “You’re smart, you can use a detour. Daud’s an idiot, but you can help.” 

He flickers, only to reappear right in front of Corvo’s face. 

“That's such a long stroke of pain for you,” he says, almost with a sympathy, and presses his lips to Corvo’s forehead. With that, there is a feeling of something popping with a splash, and Corvo falls in the eye of the silent darkened car storm.

XXVII. 

He wakes up battered and weary to the thoughts of how words ‘a pacemaker’ and ‘a peacemaker’ look alike but mean different things. How they, him and his dad, and probably his dad’s dad and so on, can’t fix things. The option just isn’t on the list. Take what that is. Rumble it a little bit, but the thing itself will remain the same.

Or you can try approaching it from the other side.

Don’t hope to block the knife when it’s already in someone’s throat, but hope to take the knife away from the hands that hold it instead. 

He has no idea if this is going to work,  
_(it’s been so long since the last time he’d done this)_  
yet he goes straight into his dusty wardrobe, clenches his fists and closes his eyes.

XV. 

Seeing her alive and bright at her house _(Corvo and Emily have moved out of it after a month from the funeral, inhabited Corvo’s old small bald apartment instead)_ hurts as much as if he got hit in the guts by an ice-cold poisoned knife. The smile he makes should be incredibly pained, because Jessamine (pretty, living, smiling, still in her crumpled lilac pajamas) immediately starts looking worried.

“What’s wrong?” She places a palm on his arm, gently. 

Corvo’s lip quivers. He says, “Nothing, love. But I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Yeah?” Her posture becomes jokingly arrogant, smile grows wider like a flex. “Like what?” 

Corvo collects the words in his head.

“Actually, no,” he says, and one of her eyebrows jumps a little bit higher. “I would like you to meet someone. A friend of mine. Right now.”

“Right now?” Jessamine says.

“Right now. And I mean it. Seriously, it’s very important.” 

He got it covered, because, thanks to the amount of timelines he’s lived in, he remembers where Daud lives, and he also got this adventurous woman’s everlasting trust. That’s why she doesn’t even change the pajama shirt when they jump in her car.

XVI. 

“For a friend of yours,” Jessamine whispers furiously, eyes practically glowing with thrill, “He hasn’t shown a single sign of actually _knowing you._ What do you hide, Mr Attano?”

“Just wait and see,” Corvo whispers back with a corner of his mouth. Then he stops pressing the brake pedal and climbs out of Daud’s car _(it’s the same car they rode fishing in, he has a Styx CD in the glovebox)._

Daud stands with an aching expression, arms crossed over his chest. The level of suspiciousness in him is so high Corvo can almost feel it splashing under his chin. 

(When they came to Daud’s place, Corvo dragged Jessamine by her arm at the door and poked the doorbell at least six times. He had no idea what to expect but he felt vivid and adventurous, and probably almost brave enough not to soothe himself with a thought that he can still try to remake everything if it all goes wrong. He started the dialogue with a messy ‘Sir, your car seems to need fixing!’ and this was probably a bad thing to say, because Daud rolled his eyes and told them to fuck off and tried closing the door. But then Jessamine said, ‘It’s about the breaks, sir. Your car, uh. It has left... very characteristic marks… in front of your garage…’

The three of them stared at the road in front of Daud’s garage. It was a plain grey surface with a few dark stripes, nothing special. Jessamine panicked, ‘We are just concerned! And he,’ she tugged Corvo by the sleeve of his shirt, ‘is particularly good at car fixing. So please. We only want to help. It’s always better to prevent… stuff.’)

“I believe it’s the master cylinder,” Corvo says, and it feels like a pendulum fall. Because Corvo does really know a thing or two about cars, because Daud has told him, while Corvo was being eaten alive by his anger and throbbing sadness, on the fishing night that the accident was due to the brake failure, because this is something he hasn’t tried yet. He has tried to save Jessamine alone. Now he tries to do this _with_ her, and together they’ve always been an unstoppable tandem. “Please, have a look yourself.”

Daud’s eyes say something like _‘I am going to bend over, and you and your girlfriend will hit me with a hammer, I know this shit.’_  
Daud’s eyes also say something like, _‘Okay. That’s okay. Maybe that’s even better’._ Corvo’s heart decides to crack over this one, but later. 

After inspecting his car Daud turns around to face them both - nervous shriveling Corvo and beaming brave Jessamine in her pajama shirt. 

He speaks, very slowly, “I hate to admit this, but you seem to be right about the brakes.”

Then Corvo starts nodding. 

“This could have resulted in something horrible,” he says. “Give it one bad night.”

“And now,” Jessamine suggests, “You would probably like to offer us some lemonade for our great help.” 

“I would not,” Daud says with a nervous twitch to his calm voice, like a thin hair barely visible on an oriental rug. 

“I’ll have double ice, please. Thank you!” She shines. 

Corvo shrinks a little bit. Daud looks struck.

“Can’t believe it,” he says as he walks out of the garage, leaving Corvo and Jessamine there alone.

She takes Corvo’s hand, interlocks their fingers. Her palm is warm. She is alive, Corvo thinks. She is alive and probably will be for a long time from now on. A huge part of him awakens, a nervous orchestra with violins and dry drums and organ pipes in shape of ‘YOU CANNOT SAVE HER’, the quirky beast that had Corvo’s throat in its mouth for such a long line of lifetimes.

The tiniest part of him believes it’s going to be different now, though. 

“You were right,” he says quietly, tracing her palm with a thumb, “I wasn’t completely honest. He’s never seen me before.”

“But you have seen him before, right?” She asks, and there is a tricky glimpse in her voice, the one that makes Corvo stare at her in awe. “The man here has caught your eye?”

He has no idea what to say.

“...In the way he has caught mine?” She says unsurely, like crawling out of a cave. Carefully touching the ground, soft paws, sharp ears. Corvo feels like he’s been taken out of an ice hole and placed directly into a bonfire. 

Daud interrupts them. He looks irritated and immediately starts also looking defensive when he notices the way they both stare at him, the way that basically says they’ve been talking about him behind his back. 

“Your fucking lemonade is in the yard,” he grunts before turning around and walking towards the porch, adding to himself in a voice muffled by the wind, “Can’t fucking believe. I can’t believe this goddamn situation.”

Corvo looks at Jessamine. She smiles back at him reassuringly, squeezes his palm a little bit, and they start walking.

“Someday, I promise, I will tell you what this was about.” Corvo says awkwardly.

This earns him another friendly squeeze and a laugh. “If you say so, cowboy!”

And he knows she trusts his promises.

XVII.

When Daud says ‘Yes’ to their 6th-grade-styled invitation to a movie theater, they celebrate it together by a small victory dance.

They spend unholy hours getting ready. Corvo helps fixing Jessamine’s hair. She saves him when his head is spinning from trying to choose one jacket out of his favorite trinity. 

Corvo feels stupid and weird, but still he catches Jessamine in the bathroom and places his palms on her shoulders.

“This is not what… typical couples do,” he says. 

She looks him straight in the eyes. 

“Absolutely not. Are we a typical couple though? Do we want to be one? And, most importantly, do we both like that dark (and probably secretly incredibly awkward) wolfy person hard enough to spend a date with him together?”

“We’re not,” Corvo says, trying to get his answers in a line. “And we don’t. And yes, we... do. I think so.”

He inhales. Exhales. For some reason he’s so, so nervous. Almost as nervous as he was when he fell for Jessamine, only this time he won’t be able to ‘fix’ anything because he can’t take another person to jump through his fragile messy memories. 

Jessamine tilts her head slightly. Corvo thinks she’s incredibly lovely. Thoughtless, he says,  
“I’m not going anywhere without you. I love you. So much.”

She smiles at him, takes a tiny step forward, rises on her toes until her forehead is pressed to his.

“I love you too,” she says. “Well, now I think we got it covered!”

(Daud looks just as nervous as they feel when they finally meet)

(He says, “No lemonade today!” and makes a funny splashing gesture with his hands, and it feels so perfectly natural for Corvo to laugh at that one that he feels like a hot air balloon)

(Not getting stuck in a single branch. Finally.)

XX. 

“We still have to talk to Emily about… all this,” Corvo says, meaning himself and Jessamine and Daud in their quirky three-sided relationship freshly blooming like the best of spring, full of nervous giggles and sticky palms and whispers and even tears and comforting hugs. The weirdest and the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to him, after Jessamine’s love itself.

“I did,” Jessamine says, not even lifting her head from Corvo’s lap. 

“Wait,” Corvo glares, “What? And how did she react?”

“Well, she said, and I quote: ‘That sounds super weird, but so did the pineapple pizza until I actually tasted it’.”

“So she’s okay with that?” 

Jessamine closes the magazine she’s reading. She looks jokingly stern and judgmental, the ‘how-can-you-interrupt-my-very-important-reading-when-i-have-just-reached-the-Bieber’s-secrets-column’’ kind of judgement in her face. 

“She is,” Jessamine says. “She says she’d like to meet him in person as well, though. And I’m almost sure she used the word ‘test’. Poor old Daud needs to be warned.” 

Corvo barks a laugh. The grieving orchestra in his chest has been silent for so long. 

“How is your amazing daughter real?” He says. 

Jessamine gives him a smirk.

 _“Our_ amazing daughter, Mr Attano.”

хххx…...х

Just when Corvo thinks he doesn’t have to use his gift anymore, this happens: Daud doesn’t touch his morning newspaper, instead he sits very still, hands on his knees, and his eyes dodge between Corvo’s and Jessamine’s faces.

He says, his mouth being a line slightly curved downwards,

“Just for you to know, I... love both of you so much.”

There it is, simple as a daisy, and Daud is _really un-clever_ to think that after a confession like this he can just start sipping his coffee and reading the labor exchange column. He’s immediately dragged in a double hug, Corvo placing his chin on the top of Daud’s head, Jessamine interlinking her fingers with his. This is a moment that has to be captured, Corvo thinks. This is the moment that asks to be replayed. For the last time. He’ll do that just to see that adorable look on Daud’s grumpy fullmetal face again. And then he’ll move on. And maybe they’ll get Emily a pet iguana she wants (Jessamine said Emily wanted to name it after Daud, and Corvo is already dying to see his expression after the big reveal). And maybe Daud will change his mind about visiting “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter”, after the Pottermore Website sorted him into Hufflepuff. This will work out.

His heart races, higher and higher, and in the dark stuffed closet he can almost see it beating through his eyelids: the pattern of time, looping around his wrists, sparkling and falling into soft shiny splinters, making him shiver, making him cry, making him so, so grateful for being here, for having this chance, for having this life. 

He closes his eyes,  
he makes a wish.


End file.
